Alex had accepted his sin, embraced his title of Demon, but Gabriel tried to deny his. He didn’t feel evil, and he didn’t enjoy perpetuating sin in others, or hurting humans. He had a loud conscience, and he appreciated it, wanted to nurture it. His flaws, and sins, were his own, and to his core, he felt he was truly not Demon or Angel. He was human.
Yet irrefutably immortal.
He had to let Anne go. Had to know he hadn’t destroyed her life, so he could move on, to a future that wasn’t stagnant, a purgatory of his own making, as Alex had pointed out.
But he wasn’t sure how to get to the truth. Had no idea who the fingerprint could belong to.
If he had Anne’s DNA, he would have an answer of sorts, because if the blood flakes still preserved on the bowie knife didn’t match Gabriel’s or Anne’s, then there had been a third person in the room. One who had nicked and cut himself as he slashed Anne in a frenzy. It wouldn’t tell Gabriel who that person was because there was no one alive to do a DNA comparison, and no other suspects besides the mysterious man in the room prior to him, but it would be enough for Gabriel to know it hadn’t been him who had taken life.
He needed to know that in his weakness, he hadn’t violated his own nature, and the laws of morality so deeply as to kill a defenseless woman.
Through the open windows Gabriel heard someone come into the courtyard gate. It was probably Sara, since she had said she’d be there at ten. She had been a little nervous with him on Saturday, jumpy almost. He had figured it was because she was embarrassed that they had slept in his bed together, but for whatever reason, after lunch she’d gone back to her apartment and he hadn’t seen her since.
He was perfectly content with his own company, but he hadn’t realized how lonely he was until he’d met Sara. Or more accurately, he had known it, but been able to ignore it. Now that he had access to Sara, it was different. He enjoyed talking to her, sharing ideas, hearing her soft laugh. Smelling her feminine perfume and touching the small of her back. There was no denying the pleasure he took from her presence, and he was pleased to hear her pushing the gate open.
He’d given her a key to the gate, so she could come and go without having to stand there waiting for him to open it. Normally, he didn’t even remember to lock it on a regular basis, and neither did his neighbor, but Sara needed it locked. It was a crutch, an illusion of safety that she needed to have right now, and he respected that. She had been through a hell of a lot, and unlike him, she wasn’t immortal. She could die.
It took him a minute to realize that she wasn’t coming up the staircase to his apartment. He listened, allowing himself to utilize his heightened senses, and after deciphering movement, he knew she had actually stopped in the courtyard. She was walking around on the old bricks, pulling out a chair at the wrought iron table that had been in the same spot for a decade.
Gabriel stood up and went into his bedroom. He had washed the streak of blood off the glass, and the window was closed again against the August heat. But he could see her through the pane, sitting at the table, reading something from a manila envelope in her lap. She had propped her feet up on another chair, tucking her yellow skirt neatly around her legs. Her blond hair spilled back over her shoulders, and she reached up and buried her hands in it, tousling and piling it up on top of her head, before letting it drop again.
The sun shone across her legs, but the building shadowed her cheek and nose.
Without giving any thought to it, Gabriel went and got his camera, and as quietly as possible, lifted the window. Angling the lenses down, to capture the feeling of watching her from above, he tested the light with several shots. Then he shifted to the left and zoomed in on her face, wanting her profile, wanting to capture the curve of her sensuous lip, the strength of her jaw, the delicacy of her petite nose, which struggled to hold her sunglasses in place. He clicked, over and over, moving in and out, shifting from her face to the whole image of Sara at Study, shoulders tense as she bent over, in contrast to the relaxed posture of her lower body.
As he grabbed shot after shot, Gabriel’s frustration grew. He didn’t want to preserve with the click of the button. He wanted to capture through creation. He wanted to see if his fingers could copy the curves of her body, the expression on her face, the duality of light, and the angle of descent. Setting the camera down on the bed, he went in to his closet, yanking boxes out of his way and tearing into a case he had shoved to the back. It held a brand new, never used sketchbook. With one single pencil, sharpened and ready to use. Bought in a moment of weakness, of longing for the feel of the slender pencil between his fingers, stroking and sliding across paper, generating thought and emotion on the page.
They felt good in his hands, and he flipped not to the first page, but to the middle of the book. At the window, he only needed a minute to shift from photographer to artist, and then his lines appeared, swift and sure, outlining Sara’s body, the scratch of pencil to paper urging him on. As he worked, glancing up and down, manic in his need to emulate her juxtaposition of tension and relaxation, she shifted in her chair, and released her skirt from its prison under her legs.
She must have been getting hot in the sun, because she took the hem from where it hit at her knees and shook it up and down to fan her legs. Then still reading, she hitched the skirt up towards her thighs and dropped her knees apart, one foot moving off the chair to the ground.
Gabriel’s mouth went dry.
It was sexual, but unintentionally so. She was concentrating on the papers in her hand, her relaxing of her legs a signal of her absorption. But that was part of what was so sexy, knowing she wasn’t trying to seduce. She just was.
Flipping to a clean page, Gabriel started over, wanting this new frame captured, this sense of abandonment from Sara. Her sensuality. The length of her neck, her slender legs. It was stunning, and he raced to draw her, wanting it down before she moved, before she became aware of him, before the sun shifted. His fingers remembered, even though it had been a hundred and fifty years, and he embraced the memory, the moment, the gift he had been given.
Sketching standing up had never been natural for him, and in impatience, he gripped his pad and climbed onto the window ledge, the sill providing a narrow seat for him. He dangled his feet over the side of the brick house, and spread his legs to make a surface for his sketchbook. And went back to work, satisfied with the progress he was making, entranced by the quiet of the courtyard, no sound but the rustle of leaves in the trees and bushes and the sound of Sara flipping through the pages in her lap.
She tugged her skirt up higher, exposing a delicious expanse of thigh on the leg that was still stretched across the chair.
He wanted to touch her, to slide his hand up that warm, firm, limb and move underneath her skirt and stroke her intimately, watching her face to see her relax, capitulate, accept pleasure at his hand. He wanted to hear her sigh for him. See the full extent of her beauty.
Outline of her form down on his pad, he studied his raw sketch in comparison to the living, breathing woman below him. It was good, and he was pleased with it.
It had been worth the risk, worth breaking a personal rule.
This was his, to keep.
He was smoothing out the line of her shoulder with his thumb when he heard her scream.
* * *
Sara was soaking up the sun, enjoying the feel of it on her face, her arms, even as it heated up her skin and made her start to perspire. The courtyard was peaceful and it had beckoned to her. The table and chairs were a little rickety, or maybe it was that the ground was uneven, mossy bricks that had settled and crumbled. But it felt good to sit enclosed by the vine covered brick walls and read the remaining stack of police reports from the Donovan investigation in solitude.
She was nervous about seeing Gabriel again. She had been weird on Saturday and she knew it. But sleeping in the same bed with him, overreacting both on the street and then again in his apartment when she’d thought he might be dead, plus getting tha
t random email suggesting her guilt, it had all been too much. Embarrassing. So after lunch she had ditched out, and now she was a little nervous about seeing him.
Not that Gabriel was exempt from eccentricities himself. He was a little more abstract than the average person. So she knew intellectually she shouldn’t worry about his reaction, knew he probably thought nothing at all about her behavior, but she was still grateful for the few minutes in the sun to collect her thoughts before she saw him. Maybe if she was lucky, he would look out his window and see her, and come down to say hi. Then she could greet him sitting down wearing sunglasses instead of standing there shuffling her feet as he opened his front door, her eyes darting all over the place.
It wasn’t a very solid plan, and was, in fact, highly wimpy of her, but she couldn’t face everything straight on all the time. She was allowed to avoid once in awhile, and she hadn’t even considered not showing up at all. She wasn’t that big of a wimp.
Something out of the corner of her eye moved and she glanced up.
And screamed, leaping out of her chair. “Jesus Christ, what are you doing?”
Gabriel was sitting in the open window and half of his flippin’ body was actually out of the frame and dangling into the ether. Her first thought was that he was trying to jump, but he was just sitting there, with a big pad of paper in his hand.
“Hey,” he called down, waving.
Very casual. Like sitting in the goddamn window forty feet above brain smashing bricks was normal.
“What are you doing?” Sara clutched her papers and eyed him, waiting for him to lose his balance and come pitching forward. She honestly didn’t think she could catch him given he had a foot in height and forty pounds on her.
“I was inspired,” he said, showing no signs of retreating inside. In fact, he swung his legs back and forth and held up the pad of paper for her to see.
“Inspired to do what? Fall to your death? For God’s sake, get back inside! Carefully.”
“I’m not going to fall. And I was inspired to sketch. Come up and see.”
Sara was intrigued and pleased that he had felt the urge to sketch, but at the same time she couldn’t fully appreciate the implication because fear was choking her. “I’m not leaving until I see that you’re safely inside.”
His head tilted slightly and he smiled. Then he just nodded and said, “Okay.”
She clutched her papers to her chest as he turned and pulled his legs back into the bedroom. But she didn’t really start breathing again until he was standing up inside and pulling the window closed.
Good grief. What the hell had that been all about? She didn’t think his sense of survival was well honed. He didn’t lock doors, he strolled into dark doorways at two in the morning, and dangled out of third floor windows.
Yet another good reason why she shouldn’t get involved with him. She would constantly be worrying about him, and frankly, she had enough to worry about without adding him to the mix.
Not that he was trying to get involved with her. She had to remember that, too.
Prepared to reprimand him yet again, Sara went up the stairs and through the wide open door of his apartment. She sincerely hoped he had just pulled it open in anticipation of her entrance and that he hadn’t been home all day with the front door gaping open. Though she would bite her tongue before she said something to him about the door, and sound like a nag. Driving the point home about dangling in the window was one thing, but add the locked door issue on top of that, and she’d sound like a freak.
Which maybe she was.
But all thoughts of stern consternations fled her mind when Gabriel held up his sketchbook in front of her.
She felt her mouth drop. Actually was aware of her jaw descending and her mouth flapping open.
It was her. He had drawn her, beautifully. With clean lines and a raw sort of honesty, and appreciation.
She saw how he had seen her from the window, relaxed, but still pensive. Warm in the sun. Legs spread.
Good God.
“It’s… lovely. You’re very, very talented.” And she was going to have to revise her opinion of his lack of interest in her. The drawing was alive, and the artist was attracted to the subject. She could see that. Feel it. Unless he had done that just for affect. But she didn’t believe it. He had perceived her pose as sensual, her posture as making love to the sunshine, accepting it, wanting it.
“Thanks.” He glanced at the sketch, a satisfied smile on his face, pencil tucked behind his ear. “Like I said, I was inspired.”
“Why did you ever stop drawing?” Sara reached out and tipped the book back to her, so they could both see it. It was highly flattering, very gratifying to see herself on paper. “If you did this in just a few minutes, I can’t imagine what you could do with paint and a week.”
Gabriel glanced down at her, his arm, leg, body close to her. She could smell his aftershave, and the oddly innocent odor of baby shampoo, and she realized that individually there were pieces of Gabriel that she really liked, appreciated, was attracted to. Sometimes, put all together, she wasn’t entirely sure what she was looking at, but studied in sections, she saw nothing but aspects that pleased her.
“There’s a reason I gave it up, Sara. Drawing, painting, playing the piano… they all require emotion. Vulnerability. Exposing a piece of me.” His thumb slid over the page, rushing over the top of her hair in pencil.
She shivered, feeling again that flood of desire he inspired.
“When you’re an alcoholic, and trying to get sober, that sort of free flowing emotion and total abandonment is a really bad thing. You need control, or at least I did, to stay away from the alcohol. I had to clamp down on all my creativity. Does that make sense?”
“Yes.” She understood. Completely. “I told you I’m a control freak. I know exactly what you mean.” Glancing up at him, she asked the obvious. “So why now? What makes it okay now?”
He shrugged. “I don’t know. It just felt right. I’m in control. And I enjoyed doing this.”
“It shows.” She felt her cheeks pinken as she saw how truly far apart her legs had been. “I thought I was alone.”
“I know. That’s what made it so enticing. You were completely unaware of me.”
“How long were you dangling out of that window? You just about gave me a heart attack.”
He laughed. “Not long. And I have very good balance.”
“So do cats and they fall sometimes too.” She rolled her eyes to finish off her point.
Gabriel startled her by running his fingertip along her cheek, softly, slowly. “Don’t worry. I have nine lives.”
The touch felt good, and she struggled against the urge to close her eyes, to lean in to it. “Nobody lives forever, Gabriel. Don’t take unnecessary risks.”
“Maybe every day feels like I am going to live forever. Maybe it feels endless.” His dark brown eyes bore into her as his finger fell away.
He had a deep voice, at odds with his delicate bone structure, and it washed over her, his face closer to hers than she had realized. Their bodies were brushing casually, no sense of personal space between them, and she gave in to the urge to touch his hair. Just the end. Lightly. Smoothing it. It was as silken and soft as she had imagined. “Maybe it’s time to rediscover some of the things that brought you joy before.”
She meant painting, the piano. But he got a licentious look in his eye. “Oh, yeah? Like what?”
“Whatever you like. Sketching, for one.”
“Maybe. If you’ll model for me.”
Sara stood still. He was so close to her his breath danced across her face. His eyes studied her, challenging her. He was going to kiss her. She was sure of it. And every inch of her welcomed it, wanted to feel his body against hers, wanted to taste his mouth, dip her tongue inside him, and have permission to plunge her fingers into his hair and tug.
“I’ll think about it,” she whispered. “But I’m a very self-conscious person, so if I model, it will
be stilted.”
“I don’t believe you,” he said. “I think if you decide to do something, you do it, without hesitation.”
She wasn’t entirely sure he was right. Nor was she sure if that was all he meant, or if he was asking her something. All she knew was that if he wanted her to initiate a kiss, it wasn’t going to happen. She wasn’t going to risk ruining their working relationship, their budding friendship sort of thing they had happening.
“Like dancing,” he added. “Once you decided to go out there, you went for it.”
That embarrassed her. Maybe because dancing, putting it out there, reminded her of the flaws in her mother, that lack of control she had frequently displayed. Sara backed up, broke away, both physically and emotionally. He wasn’t going to touch her, she could sense that. And she was too raw to make a move, wasn’t sure it was a good idea at all. “Yeah, and when you decide to sketch, you climb out of a window to do it.”
Gabriel didn’t answer, just watched her with eyes that spoke volumes, yet not in a way she could understand. “Is there somewhere I can get some coffee?” she asked. She needed to get away from him.
“Turn right on Royal and go down a block.”
It never seemed to jar him that she switched subjects clear out of the blue, and he never missed a beat. Maybe it was because he was as random as she was.
“Thanks. Want anything?”
He shook his head no. But he gave a soft laugh, a sort of scoff of disbelief.
“What?”
“Nothing.”
It was possibly the most irritating word in the English language.
So without bothering to pursue that any further, Sara dug into her purse for her sunglasses and headed for the door.
Dark Secrets: A Paranormal Romance Anthology Page 42